New meta-analysis checks the correlation between intelligence and faith

absolutely, the Bible is used by scientist to uncover ancient civilizations. When the Bible says something existed, guess what, it's never been wrong. It the most analyzed ancient text and the version can be traced back to the original documents more than any other ancient text. See dead sea scrolls.

Really, how is that? The Bible explains the observable universe very nicely. Mentions that the earth is round, and describes dinosaurs to name just two examples.

NB: "Religion definitely fails when it comes to the observable universe." Wolf is responding to a post I wrote.

So here's my answer.

NO WHERE in Scripture are dinosaurs mentioned. NO WHERE. The ancient peoples who wrote the Bible haven't the foggiest idea what a dinosaur was; they died out 65 million years before Abraham pitched his tent in the Levant.

The shape of the earth also is not mentioned. You've read into it somewhere.

You sound like the kind of Christian who believes the Earth is only 6,000 years old or so, when in fact it's between 3.5 billion and 4 billion.

The Bible is not a science textbook. I've made this point many times before here on Ars. And yet I'm a devout Catholic. I do this by understanding that the Bible is not a science text. It is theology.

Science rules my professional life (I teach nursing, including graduate level nursing research). Faith is for my personal life and my own spiritual betterment. As a nurse, I take a holistic approach to life, and include time for that spirituality. But I don't confuse the two; they do not mix.

You can be a person of faith and a person of reason if you understand WHY following a spiritual path is important to YOU, while respecting that it might not be important to others. Wolf, you'd have a whole lot more credibility if you stopped trying to "prove" the Bible contains real science. It does not.

There was a case in Arizona some years back of a "religion" that involved paying women for sex.It turns out "freedom of religion" doesn't always hold weight in the courts.

Whoever founded that religion must have been really stupid.Most men who found religions these days at least claim that the women are supposed to have sex with them for free.

Either stupid or realistic about the likelyhood of him convincing women to have sex with him for free.

I don't recall the specifics.Basically it was a group of people making money from prostitution.They attempted to evade the law on this (not that I agree with that law in first place) by calling themselves a "Temple", registering as a religion, and claiming it was a religious ceremony.

The courts saw differently.I think they should see differently with people who want to not educate their children, people who want to claim they can heal through prayer for payment, people who preach the world is about to end and encourage others to sell their possessions and move out to the commune etc etc.

That doesn't mean people can't pray as they wish, but religions in the US get a free pass where very often they really shouldn't.

Your conclusion is basically that you will believe your own internally-derived worldview regardless of evidence, just as surely as a religious person. Great... way to attack the problem at its root.

Quite the contrary, Atheists believe as we do because of evidence for our worldview and lack of evidence for the supernatural. If there are supernatural beings from fairies to gods, why are they hiding? If they meddle with the laws of nature, how could they do that without leaving evidence. Sometimes absence of evidence really is evidence of absence.

There was a case in Arizona some years back of a "religion" that involved paying women for sex.It turns out "freedom of religion" doesn't always hold weight in the courts.

Whoever founded that religion must have been really stupid.Most men who found religions these days at least claim that the women are supposed to have sex with them for free.

Either stupid or realistic about the likelyhood of him convincing women to have sex with him for free.

I'm sure that no matter what religion someone comes up with, or who comes up with it, there will be people (including women) who will choose to believe it and commit themselves to obedience to its precepts.

I can't "prove" that Julius Caesar lived, but I have a lot of evidence. So yes I can quite happily accept claims that can't be proven....Certainly no way of knowing if you constrain yourself to empirical analysis.

What? You said earlier in that post that you have a lot of evidence that Caesar existed, so you have no trouble believing something that can't be proven... then you spout this little gem. What, exactly do you think Empirical Analysis means?

In short, Empirical Analysis is the analysis of evidence - either emperical or otherwise, to test a theory. You accept Caesar based on evidence, have examined it and accepted it by means of an emperical analysis. You don't just believe that Caesar exists regardless of what the evidence states, you believe it because of the evidence. You, sir, are an Empiricist by your own words.

Your links don't support your argument. Empiricism is concerned with testable, repeatable hypothesis. The evidence for Caesar is historical, not empirical. I was arguing against Vishnu who stated that the reasonable thing to do was to reject any claim that couldn't be proven.

My second quote in its context was that if you constrain yourself to empirical analysis you will not be able to fully get at "fundamental truth" - if such a thing exists.

Maybe the correlation is the other way around. It's not that intelligent people are less religious, but that religion doesn't want intelligent people. At least most modern organised religions discourage critical thinking, the ability to reason... so from the start they are saying to intelligent people "your kind is not welcome here".

True. There are several biblical stories that attack intelligence and knowledge. The infamous apple and Eve story, tower of bable...

absolutely, the Bible is used by scientist to uncover ancient civilizations. When the Bible says something existed, guess what, it's never been wrong. It the most analyzed ancient text and the version can be traced back to the original documents more than any other ancient text. See dead sea scrolls.

Maybe because the original scrolls were written in an age when those civilizations existed? I know for a fact that there is no mention of the Yellow river civilization, nor anything about the earliest empires in China in the Bible. Strange, since Jesus should know the second-largest empire in the world around 0AD.

Of course there is also no mention of Mayans, North American Indian culture, early Mongolian factions in the bible.

As always, the word “correlation” is important. It hasn’t been shown that higher intelligence causes someone to be less religious. So, it wouldn’t be right to call someone a dimwit just because of their religious beliefs.

Correlation isn't causation, but it sure is a hint! - Edward Tufte (Statistician, Yale University Professor)

People who are intelligent enough don't discard the supernatural "a priori" (i.e. before they even begin).

The ultimate problem with atheism is, how does someone prove that something or somebody (here, God) doesn't exist? Maybe they just haven't been looking at the right places. Maybe they have met God, but they didn't recognize him.

If intelligence only means "thinking only in terms of what one can scientifically measure", that kind of thinking excludes the supernatural, and as such, has no chance of finding it. And if God exists, then for a creature to reject his Creator, it's the ultimate missed opportunity.

To me, intelligence includes the capability to acknowledge someone's own limitations.

Suppose I tell you I have a fire breathing dragon living in my garage and when you ask to see it I show you an apparently empty garage. You ask where this fire breathing dragon is and I tell you he is invisible. So, seeing dust on the floor and no footprints, you ask why there are no foot prints and I tell you the invisible fire breathing dragon doesn't walk, he floats around. So you wander around my garage, testing the temperature and finding no particular sources of heat say that you can't find any evidence of fire and I tell you this is an invisible, floating, heatless fire breathing dragon. You then ask what is the difference between an invisible, floating, heatless fire breathing dragon and no dragon at all and I have no answer other than I know the dragon is there. Why should you believe in my invisible, floating, heatless fire breathing dragon?

Atheists, for the most part, don't reject the supernatural without considering it, we reject it because there is no discernible difference between there being a supernatural as claimed by believers and there being no supernatural at all.

I might have missed it, but you should have given credit to the person who wrote this- it comes from Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World, easily on my favorite top 5 list of books.

Really, how is that? The Bible explains the observable universe very nicely. Mentions that the earth is round, and describes dinosaurs to name just two examples.

NB: "Religion definitely fails when it comes to the observable universe." Wolf is responding to a post I wrote.

So here's my answer.

NO WHERE in Scripture are dinosaurs mentioned. NO WHERE. The ancient peoples who wrote the Bible haven't the foggiest idea what a dinosaur was; they died out 65 million years before Abraham pitched his tent in the Levant.

The shape of the earth also is not mentioned. You've read into it somewhere.

You sound like the kind of Christian who believes the Earth is only 6,000 years old or so, when in fact it's between 3.5 billion and 4 billion. Couldn't be farther from the truth.

The Bible is not a science textbook. I've made this point many times before here on Ars. And yet I'm a devout Catholic. I do this by understanding that the Bible is not a science text. It is theology.

I never said it was a science book. I don't get your point at all.

Science rules my professional life (I teach nursing, including graduate level nursing research). Faith is for my personal life and my own spiritual betterment. As a nurse, I take a holistic approach to life, and include time for that spirituality. But I don't confuse the two; they do not mix.

I too am in the technology world and I take my faith with me wherever I go. Faith and my job are not diametrically opposed. My daughter is a top notch nurse and her Faith in Jesus makes her that way.

You can be a person of faith and a person of reason if you understand WHY following a spiritual path is important to YOU, while respecting that it might not be important to others. Wolf, you'd have a whole lot more credibility if you stopped trying to "prove" the Bible contains real science. It does not.

When in the world did I say the Bible is a science book, I think you need to reread what I wrote. That is a jump to conclusions wider than the length between the earth and the moon.

absolutely, the Bible is used by scientist to uncover ancient civilizations. When the Bible says something existed, guess what, it's never been wrong. It the most analyzed ancient text and the version can be traced back to the original documents more than any other ancient text. See dead sea scrolls.

We know about those ancient civilizations from plenty of other sources than the Bible. We have plenty of writings from contemporary periods in ancient times; down to bills for beer in ancient Egypt.

The Bible can help somewhat with the study of ancient peoples, but it's not much of a better history text than it is of a science text. We know that there was a great battle at Jericho. We don't know that a bunch of Hebrews blew their trumpets and the walls came tumbling down.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are not the original documents of the Bible, particularly not the New Testament. They are believed to be the writings of the Essenes, who were a Jewish cult. Some of the documents date 400 years before the birth of Christ; no parts of the New Testament are found there and there is evidence that the people who buried them were not in the mainstream of Hebrew thought at the time.

The New Testament, OTOH, though believed to have been written within 70 years of the death of Christ, does not exist in an original version less than 150 years after the death of Christ.

They're incredibly valuable from a historiographical perspective. But they no more prove truths in the Bible than the Rosetta Stone does.

But then again, so are most of Lewis' arguments.As is his sun allegory.Apples and Tomatoes.

The problem for some people with allegories is that it leaves it up to the reader to interpret and interpretation is a life long endeavor. Some bit of wisdom you read at 21 may click at 31 or later. Your life is a long running program that you need to pay attention to if you want to really learn anything about yourself or the world. People are in a hurry. It's easier for people to look at an allegory as truth than to look at it as a lesson that they have to participate in getting the answer.

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I am an old guy for this site at 42.On thing I have learned is that sometimes nonsense doesn't have a hidden meaning. It is just nonsense people feel good about.

In my opinion this includes religion.

I'm an older guy on this site at 52. 53 in 3 weeks.

It was just his way of expressing himself, and as such is as valid as anyone else expressing themselves and what they believe in. There is religion, and there is spirituality. There are people within religions as well as agnostics who may be deeply spiritual, and religious folk who are religious by rote and are not spiritual at all.You don't have to consider yourself either. Perhaps you're just a seeker, but we make choices, even when we make no choices. (Alas, I got that last line paraphrasing the band RUSH.) If people embrace religion to make themselves feel good or for any reason, that's fine as long as they don't hurt themselves or others. It is not my place to criticize one persons path, claim that mine is superior, or try to convert people to my way of thinking. But I do hope that people take a moment to think and to feel if what they are doing for themselves and that impact others is honest and real.

What it comes down to is this, if you follow any path blindly, whether organized religion or a personal path, you do yourself and the universe a disservice.

People who are intelligent enough don't discard the supernatural "a priori" (i.e. before they even begin).

The ultimate problem with atheism is, how does someone prove that something or somebody (here, God) doesn't exist? Maybe they just haven't been looking at the right places. Maybe they have met God, but they didn't recognize him.

If intelligence only means "thinking only in terms of what one can scientifically measure", that kind of thinking excludes the supernatural, and as such, has no chance of finding it. And if God exists, then for a creature to reject his Creator, it's the ultimate missed opportunity.

To me, intelligence includes the capability to acknowledge someone's own limitations.

Suppose I tell you I have a fire breathing dragon living in my garage and when you ask to see it I show you an apparently empty garage. You ask where this fire breathing dragon is and I tell you he is invisible. So, seeing dust on the floor and no footprints, you ask why there are no foot prints and I tell you the invisible fire breathing dragon doesn't walk, he floats around. So you wander around my garage, testing the temperature and finding no particular sources of heat say that you can't find any evidence of fire and I tell you this is an invisible, floating, heatless fire breathing dragon. You then ask what is the difference between an invisible, floating, heatless fire breathing dragon and no dragon at all and I have no answer other than I know the dragon is there. Why should you believe in my invisible, floating, heatless fire breathing dragon?

Atheists, for the most part, don't reject the supernatural without considering it, we reject it because there is no discernible difference between there being a supernatural as claimed by believers and there being no supernatural at all.

I might have missed it, but you should have given credit to the person who wrote this- it comes from Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World, easily on my favorite top 5 list of books.

My favorite example is Sagan's statement at the beginning of Cosmos: “The universe is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be." This is a profoundly unscientific way to start a book or miniseries on science, because it isn't science and he has no empirical proof that this is the case. It is, or was, his belief.

Sounds like a definition to me.

He simply describes what he means when he talks about "the universe".

No it's not because he immediately rejects anything outside the universe (i.e., that the transcendent).

I don't understand. If I define the universe as "everything there is", of course there can't be anything outside of it.

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Furthermore, he as no empirical basis to make that statement.

He doesn't need to. If I define that everything with a flat surface and four legs is a table in some context, then so it is. Of course you can ignore everything I say if you don't like the definition ...

I don't see why a definition of universe has anything to do with religion. Other than the fact that some religious people are offended by the strangest of things. But that's not the fault of the one writing down the definition.

I'm aware that being atheist requires one to make a rather large assumption as well. The assumption is of course that a deity does not exist.

Why is that a large assumption?

I also assume the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not exist (there, I said it). Where is the difference?

Because if you believe in the FSM, you at least have a 1 in 4 chance of going to a Heaven with Beer Volcanoes and a Stripper Factory. Well, 2 in 4, but that other potential outcome has flat beer and diseased strippers. So, pretty much like that strip joint round the corner.

But then again, so are most of Lewis' arguments.As is his sun allegory.Apples and Tomatoes.

The problem for some people with allegories is that it leaves it up to the reader to interpret and interpretation is a life long endeavor. Some bit of wisdom you read at 21 may click at 31 or later. Your life is a long running program that you need to pay attention to if you want to really learn anything about yourself or the world. People are in a hurry. It's easier for people to look at an allegory as truth than to look at it as a lesson that they have to participate in getting the answer.

I am an old guy for this site at 42.On thing I have learned is that sometimes nonsense doesn't have a hidden meaning. It is just nonsense people feel good about.

In my opinion this includes religion.

I'm an older guy on this site at 52. 53 in 3 weeks.

It was just his way of expressing himself, and as such is as valid as anyone else expressing themselves and what they believe in. There is religion, and there is spirituality. There are people within religions as well as agnostics who may be deeply spiritual, and religious folk who are religious by rote and are not spiritual at all.You don't have to consider yourself either. Perhaps you're just a seeker, but we choices, even when we make no choices. (Alas, I got that last line paraphrasing the band RUSH.) If people embrace religion to make themselves feel good or for any reason, that's fine as long as they don't hurt themselves or others. It is not my place to criticize one persons path, claim that mine is superior, or try to convert people to my way of thinking. But I do hope that people take a moment to think and to feel if what they are doing for themselves and that impact others is honest and real.

What it comes down to is this, if you follow any path blindly, whether organized religion or a personal path, you do yourself and the universe a disservice.[/quote]

Oh I agree. People can do what they want. As long as they don't hurt others including their children. I am just saying Lewis' arguments are pretty silly. That's all.

absolutely, the Bible is used by scientist to uncover ancient civilizations. When the Bible says something existed, guess what, it's never been wrong. It the most analyzed ancient text and the version can be traced back to the original documents more than any other ancient text. See dead sea scrolls.

Maybe because the original scrolls were written in an age when those civilizations existed? I know for a fact that there is no mention of the Yellow river civilization, nor anything about the earliest empires in China in the Bible. Strange, since Jesus should know the second-largest empire in the world around 0AD.

So, because the Bible doesn't mention something it means it's contradictory? You need to reexamine the meaning of the word.

Of course there is also no mention of Mayans, North American Indian culture, early Mongolian factions in the bible.

What does that have to do with anything? You are discounting everything that is in the Bible, (which is accurate by the way) and discounting it because it doesn't mention something? That argument makes no sense. I say that in a non antagonistic way I want to add. I am enjoying this conversation.

absolutely, the Bible is used by scientist to uncover ancient civilizations. When the Bible says something existed, guess what, it's never been wrong. It the most analyzed ancient text and the version can be traced back to the original documents more than any other ancient text. See dead sea scrolls.

How about the implication that the entire human race was populated by a single mating pair? I'm pretty sure that one pair can't contain the necessary genetic diversity to maintain a population for millions (well, thousands if you're a YEC) of years.

I'm not a biologist though, so I would appreciate additional insight. I could be wrong here.

So, yes, the Earth and creation fits very well with our observable world.

How about when Satan takes Jesus up on a mountain and Jesus can see the entire world?

I would count this as an example of literary license. No one at the time would have believed that anyone could actually see the whole world from the top of a mountain, unless it were assumed that the vision was supernatural.

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Or Joshua stops the sun in the sky?

Once you accept an omnipotent God, it's surely not a problem to accept this, as the ability to do this sort of thing is cleanly covered by omnipotence.

There's good historical evidence that Jesus existed. And evidence that he claimed to be the messiah. There's also good historical evidence that a number of other people claimed to be the messiah around the same period. As for historical evidence whether any of these claims were true or false, that is another matter entirely.

Actually no, there's only a poor quality secondary reference to a 'Cristos' some time around around the 100 years he is supposed to have lived and what may be a tertiary reference to that. Not a single reference to Jesus until over a century afterwards.

No primary sources, no textual evidence, no corroboration between the events described in the bible and the timing of actual historic events.

Frankly if it was put forward as a serious history text, the bible would be ridiculed. People, dates, nations and events are not close to what actually happened and have been edited for political gain.

Which also ties back into the subject of the article, though I do tend to favour quality education over raw intelligence as the driver.

What it comes down to is this, if you follow any path blindly, whether organized religion or a personal path, you do yourself and the universe a disservice.

DSpot Said

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Oh I agree. People can do what they want. As long as they don't hurt others including their children. I am just saying Lewis' arguments are pretty silly. That's all.

Well, you're allowed. But perhaps tomorrow morning you may look at it again and see it, dare I say, in a different light. I respect him for who he was, as I respect the Buddha, Laozi and all that followed them, including you.

absolutely, the Bible is used by scientist to uncover ancient civilizations. When the Bible says something existed, guess what, it's never been wrong. It the most analyzed ancient text and the version can be traced back to the original documents more than any other ancient text. See dead sea scrolls.

How about the implication that the entire human race was populated by a single mating pair? I'm pretty sure that one pair can't contain the necessary genetic diversity to maintain a population for millions (well, thousands if you're a YEC) of years.

I'm not a biologist though, so I would appreciate additional insight. I could be wrong here.

Your conclusion is basically that you will believe your own internally-derived worldview regardless of evidence, just as surely as a religious person. Great... way to attack the problem at its root.

Quite the contrary, Atheists believe as we do because of evidence for our worldview and lack of evidence for the supernatural. If there are supernatural beings from fairies to gods, why are they hiding? If they meddle with the laws of nature, how could they do that without leaving evidence. Sometimes absence of evidence really is evidence of absence.

ufo42 said it better than I did, but as there has not been any evidence of these spiritual beings in the history of civilization and there is indication that said evidence will "miraculously" appear within my lifetime, it is not worth it for a lot of people to sit on the fence until an untestable proposition becomes testable.

If a physical process is explainable by theory without resorting to "invisible Hand of God" obscura, it is senseless to invoke Russel's Teapot to explain said process.

On top of that, many "strong" atheists object to the trappings of proscriptions and dogma that organized religion offers, and point to the many historical atrocities carried out by religions as an example of the insufficiency of religions to guide ethical behaviour. Granted, atheists have been responsible for some pretty nasty shit, too - I'm looking at you, Stalin - so our track record isn't so great, but at least by choosing to refute religion I don't have to shackle myself to other people's prejudices and conformity. Instead, I'll just formulate my own prejudices and irrational beliefs, thank you very much (and I support the right of every one else to do so as long as it doesn't harm or unduly restrict anyone else in the process).

I would count this as an example of literary license. No one at the time would have believed that anyone could actually see the whole world from the top of a mountain, unless it were assumed that the vision was supernatural.

Or a group of people who didn't understand how large the world was writing the book rather than an all knowing being....

I can't "prove" that Julius Caesar lived, but I have a lot of evidence. So yes I can quite happily accept claims that can't be proven....Certainly no way of knowing if you constrain yourself to empirical analysis.

What? You said earlier in that post that you have a lot of evidence that Caesar existed, so you have no trouble believing something that can't be proven... then you spout this little gem. What, exactly do you think Empirical Analysis means?

In short, Empirical Analysis is the analysis of evidence - either emperical or otherwise, to test a theory. You accept Caesar based on evidence, have examined it and accepted it by means of an emperical analysis. You don't just believe that Caesar exists regardless of what the evidence states, you believe it because of the evidence. You, sir, are an Empiricist by your own words.

Your links don't support your argument. Empiricism is concerned with testable, repeatable hypothesis. The evidence for Caesar is historical, not empirical. I was arguing against Vishnu who stated that the reasonable thing to do was to reject any claim that couldn't be proven.

My second quote in its context was that if you constrain yourself to empirical analysis you will not be able to fully get at "fundamental truth" - if such a thing exists.

Agreed. I mistook one evidenciary claim for another. My apologies on the misconstrued argument. I must now bow out and go watch the Perseids.